FBI affiliates hacked by LulzSec

Mischiefcreants, password-reusing 'hat swap mud

Common Topics

Mischief-making hacking group LulzSec hacked into the systems of an FBI-affiliated public-private partnership organisation, defacing its website and leaking its email database in the process.

Website defacements included mooching messages such as "LET IT FLOW YOU STUPID FBI BATTLESHIPS" and a video clip. Part of the message suggests that LulzSec launched the attack as some sort of response to the Obama administration's plans to make hacking an act of war.

Apart from website meddling there were data losses including the personal info for 180 users at Infragard, a private-public partnership between the FBI and US business that works in cyber-security.

LulzSec tried the passwords exposed by the hack on other locations, allowing it to hack into other systems thanks to some users' re-use of the same passwords.

In particular it claims to have targeted Karim Hijazi, who used his Infragard password for his Gmail account and a corporate account with a white-hat hacking group he runs, called Unveillance. Documents released by LulzSec include purported chatlogs with Hijazi and internal emails.

Unveillance issued a statement claiming that it had been the target of extortion by Lulzsec.

Over the last two weeks, my company, Unveillance, has been the target of a sophisticated group of hackers now identified as "LulzSec". During this two week period, I was personally contacted by several members of this group who made threats against me and my company to try to obtain money as well as to force me into revealing sensitive data about my botnet intelligence that would have put many other businesses, government agencies and individuals at risk of massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

In spite of these threats, I refused to pay off LulzSec or to supply them with access to this sensitive botnet information. Had we agreed to provide this data to them, LulzSec would have been able to grow the size and scope of their DDoS attack and fraud capabilities.

LulzSec said, in its response, that it was playing a sting against Hijazi and only sought to exposed the alleged incompetence and lack of professional standards within Unveillance by stringing it along.

To clarify, we were never going to extort anything from you. We were simply going to pressure you into a position where you could be willing to give us money for our silence, and then expose you publicly.

Ironically, despite the fact that you A) claimed that you wouldn't do something like that, and B) foolishly got outsmarted yet again, we'd like to point out something that you did do: attempt to cooperate with mystery hackers in order to radically, and illegally, boost your company from the ground. Karim, founder of Unveillance, attempted from the start to work with us for his own gain, and he even offered us payment for certain "tasks".

These tasks, hardly subtle at this point, were those of a malicious nature; destroying Karim's competitors through insider info and holes Karim would supply us. Karim also wanted us to help track "enemy" botnets and "enemy" botnet trackers. All in return for our silence and mutual gain.

LulzSec shot to prominence last month with a high-profile hack against PBS followed days later by a break-in that yielded 1 million user records and coupon codes at Sony BMG sites and the Sony Pictures Entertainment site. ®